RD 4 Ch 18

The last day and a half had been a hard push, once we entered the hive there was no stopping as the queen kept pumping out more Hivnara. The hive itself became a gauntlet, one that we were almost done with.

I wiped blood from my lips, squaring off against the Hivnara queen. She was a little more humanoid than most of the Hivnara, but only barely because she stood on two legs with four arms. Though, that might be an issue of balance, since her back section was several times the size of her torso. It was like an eight foot tall woman, with a bus sized ass.

We were deep inside the hive, in a massive chamber with one third of the wall being glowing eggs that dripped from the ceiling and rose in piles stuck together with some sort of hardened gel.

The rest of my group was scattered, dealing with the numerous additional monsters that had spawned during this fight. They left me to deal with the queen, who was proving to be a difficult adversary.

The queen hissed, spitting a glob of poison that I partially blocked with a swing of my blood blade. A small fleck of green splattered onto my shoulder, turning my skin black and immediately demonstrating the danger of the poison.

The substance burned enough to make my movements more difficult, but I didn't have time to stand still.

Doing my best to ignore the pain, I rushed at the queen again, stabbing my blood blade into her hardened shell. Despite my new abilities, the blade could only penetrate about a finger's length deep before I lacked the strength to drive it any deeper. I pulled out, dodging away as her significant bulk swung towards me. 

Similar to how ants functioned, the Hivnara queen was significantly larger than all of the other types, most of that weight on her back section. Yet, by some miracle, she managed to reposition herself, swinging around that tremendous bulk.

I avoided touching her as much as I could. Instead, I stabbed my sword into one of the egg-like nodules on her back, killing the growing Hivnara inside while also using it to keep us apart and ride out her swing.

There were finger length barbs along her exoskeleton and one brush with them had been enough for me. 

Gloria's fire swept out to my side and slammed into that wound, the fire drilling and digging deeper as we all did our best to keep the situation under control.

I glanced over to where Circe was flying in loose circles while slamming huge banks of wind into the swarm of Hivnara. All of the ladies had given up on trying to kill the Hivnara, and the focus now was simply on keeping them contained while I could finish the boss. 

The queen, frustrated by the fire digging into her back half, let out a terrible cry. A comically small pair of wings on her back fluttered and her body shimmered as she disappeared.

I spun around, swinging sanguine slashes through the air, trying to find and hit the queen out of her cloaking.

But with her speed, she had managed to reposition herself in the blink of an eye. Not for the first time.

I was growing frustrated, annoyed with this enemy that would not stay still. I scanned the area, trying to pinpoint the queen’s new location.

"There!" Nyx shouted, pointing to a spot where her serpents were indicating.

Gloria's fire beat me to the area, smashing into the spot halfway up the wall. The blast caused the queen to reappear before dropping down to the floor once again with a thunderous boom that shook the entire cavern. 

I rushed forward to attack, only stopping briefly to avoid getting caught up in a swarming pack of Hivnara. I was ready for this fight to be finished. It had taken far too long already. 

"Kill it, Bran!" Circe shouted as the Hivnara chasing her nipped dangerously at her heels.

"Working on it," I called over my shoulder, remaining calm as I slammed into the queen's front, engaging her in a more direct battle. It was risky to take her head on, but at this point, the worst that could happen was her activating last stand and me blowing through her. I hacked at her torso while she swung her front legs back and forth.

A three-toed claw at the end created deep gouges in my skin, but I did my best to ignore that as I stabbed a blood blade into a joint at the base of one of her legs. 

I grinned like a loon as I wiggled my wrist back and forth, activating sanguine slashes, one after the other, directly into the Hivnara Queen's body.

The damage must have been significant as the queen froze mid-slash and tried to push me off. The three-clawed foot slammed straight into my chest and, unfortunately, straight through, carving out a large chunk and a section of my heart.

The blood that sprayed out of me onto the queen was almost comically like a fire hose. Well, if I weren’t about to bleed out.

Even with all of my experience taking damage and staying active in a fight, my body refused to move as blood pumped out of my torso and I lost all of the fluid keeping my muscles tense.

A strange strength welled up in my body as a pink glow came from my heart, and I saw Simone head down, praying with the same effect.

Suddenly, despite the spraying blood, I no longer felt like I was about to die. I created a second blood blade that I stabbed into the queen's shoulder. I started wiggling both of the blades and shredding her insides with as many sanguine slashes as I could produce. 

The effect was immediate.

She locked up and ignored the goo leaching out between her chitin plates. As the leaking robbed her of the tension in her body, I kept my pace, shredding away at her. A few more seconds that felt like eternity passed before she collapsed, melting into the ground. All of the ads in the room fell lifelessly to join their queen in death. 

I panted, staggering back before falling on my ass. Not worried about anything but reaching the least energy expending activity, I flopped, my arms and legs spread out. 

My body still continued to pump blood, some leaking out of my body, but the geyser from my chest had stopped. A moment later, I could feel my heartbeat pick back up as a prompt flitted across the edge of my vision. I looked to confirm that I had upgraded Regeneration to Immortal Body and let out a heavy, satisfied sigh.

I thumped my head back down on the ground, closing my eyes for a second to savor the fact that I was still alive, only to be interrupted a second later as I felt something soft poke my chest and peeked open my eyes. 

Nyx was trying to corral her snake hair, however, they were too curious, poking and prodding at where my chest had just moments ago been carved out.

Letting my eyes open fully, I watched as the snakes looked like they were throwing a party. When they spotting me watching, they swarmed my face with soft kisses.

I chuckled and wrapped my arm around a bundle of them, giving them a tight squeeze before letting them go.

They seemed incredibly satisfied at the touch, giving me a squeeze back before flitting back to Nyx, where she looked completely exasperated. 

"I'm sorry," she said. 

"Don't be," I winced as I sat myself up, "I'm fairly certain they are your subconscious feelings, and it's kind of cute to know that your subconscious is so interested in ensuring that I'm okay." 

There was a loud crack as the walls of the cavern broke, and the one half of the cavern that was filled with Hivnara eggs gave way. A flood of gold coins poured down onto our group, managing to catch Simone.

She let herself be lifted by the coins, riding the wave with a big cheer and kicking her legs.

I scooped Nyx up as the coins reached us, keeping us afloat.

"Well now," Circe began, vacuuming up as many gold coins as she could with a spatial ring on each hand. "I hope you don't mind, Bran. I think we should all just suck up as much as we can and consider that our split." She whistled innocently, a giant smile on her face.

I rolled my eyes at her antics. How was she this old and still so concerned about loot?

Unwilling to let her get everything, I began sucking up gold coins with my own spatial rings.

"The loot for the mini-bosses was disappointing," Merlin said, glancing at me. Her eyes rode to the top of my head.

I quickly tapped the crown, disappearing it into one of my spatial rings. I had put it on because there was no sense going into an SS-rank boss fight without every ounce of advantage.

However, for day to day, the crown was too gaudy. As for the scale mail of bronze feather plates, I had left that alone for the Hivnara dungeon. The SS-rank monsters would have destroyed it. It was far more valuable to me to protect myself from other humans or demons that were less likely to have the S-rank requirement to punch through it. Or at least, that was my rationale. I also did not like relying on equipment too much; I had seen that weakness fail many others in my past.

I looked over, knowing that Simone was wearing her chitten scalemail under her disguise. Though, I squinted at her and saw that even that skill had undergone an upgrade some time during this whole gauntlet. It was now called Enchanting Illusion and she could project it out from herself as well as make it feel real to cursory touches.

I grinned, pleased at the development. That would be beyond powerful, although better in non-direct confrontations.

"Loot!" Simone squealed, excited to pull a large Hivnara plate from the pile only to frown a bit and turn it over to see a handle. With that her frown deepened further almost like she was confused.

"It's a shield, Simone.” I tried to suppress a chuckle at her face.

“That's somehow not quite as exciting as many other options," she held the shield out with a scowl. “But at least you could get hurt less.”

"Why are you giving that to him?" Merlin asked. "He doesn't need a shield. He just uses his big meaty body. I mean, we all saw his heart just get ripped out, didn't we? And he’s still alive? Does he really have Regeneration or is it some ungodly rank now?" 

I coughed into my hand, not about to share my character screen with anyone. "Something like that. But it’s true, Simone. If you or Gloria pull that out of your spatial ring in that time of need, it's going to be far more beneficial to you than me. I don't need the protection as much." 

Simone scowled and looked at the shield again and then back at me. "I don't think the shield makes sense for me.”

“If you won't take it, I will." Gloria strode over, grabbing the shield from Simone's hands and hefting it to see just how heavy it might be. "Oh, yeah. I could swing this around, probably even hit people with it. It's SS rank, so it'll put a good dent in someone's skulls if I use it to bash them, right?" 

"You're welcome to take it," Circe flashed a smile, "and it will come out of your share of the loot.”

 I rolled my eyes, but perhaps this part of her personality was how she had such gold boosted stats. "And what else might we pull from here?" I glanced around the gold at my feet, seeing if anything was poking out. However, I wasn't that lucky. 

Nyx was. She pulled out a vibrant red cloth with excitement, only to hold it up, her face falling as it was a simple sash. "This doesn't exactly cover anything too important."

I scanned it, knowing that often system items were far more than they appeared. Using soul gaze, my eyes lit up. "Well, if you don't want that, I'll take it.” I offered, noting that everybody quickly scanned the item.

[Sash of the Neverending SS - Imbues the wearer with Regeneration C Rank]

Given that an SS rank item only gave C rank Regeneration proved how powerful the ability was. Though the sash was also the perfect crafting material, it would be simple to add it to just about any item as long as you could get the system to register it as a new item.

Circe let out a soft whistle. "Bran, I don't think you need that. I'll go ahead and take it." The arch sorceress breezed across the room, flying on a small pocket of wind.

But Nyx finished her inspection and held it away before it fell into Circe’s hands. "Wait a moment, maybe I've changed my mind," Nyx said as her serpents wrapped around it possessively hissing at Circe. 

"Don't fight over it," I chuckled, glancing again at the sash. It might not cover a large area, but it wasn't supposed to. Instead, it provided rank C regeneration, which was invaluable to any initiated. 

"The proper way to handle this is a small game of chance." Merlin pulled out a set of ancient-looking dice. They appeared as if they were carved from dinosaur bones, worn and weathered. She gave them a shake in her hand. 

"What do you say, Circe? Care to pick a number?" Merlin offered.

Circe crossed her arms under her chest, narrowing her eyes towards Merlin. "And how do I know you won't cheat?" 

"And how do I know you won't? You've been working hard on that fine control of wind. It would only take a small gust, and you could ensure you keep the sash.” Merlin challenged.

“How about I be the referee?" I offered, extending my hands for the dice. 

Merlin tossed them through the air, and I snatched them, holding them up and feeling them in my palm, ensuring they weren't weighted.

This method had been used often in my past life. The clans would insist on something like this if you joined them.

"All right, pick your numbers." I told them. There was always a way to game the system though.

Gloria, who had the shield, stayed out. Simone seemed uninterested.

Nyx bit her lip. "Three. No, wait, eight." Nyx answered.

I chuckled. "Three dice, six sides, one to eighteen. Or three to eighteen is the whole range." I told her so that she knew what she was working with.

"Thirteen," Merlin said without hesitation. 

"Fourteen," Circe smirked and cast a glance at the other member of our party. 

I shook the dice in my hands before rolling them onto some of the remaining gold. They clattered and clinked amongst the coins before showing a three. 

Nyx cursed, and her serpents threw a fit. "I should have stuck with three," she muttered. 

"You still win," Merlin pointed out. "Whoever's the closest gets it." 

"Oh, really?" Nyx perked up and began to wrap the sash around her waist. We'd have to find her some clothes to match it. The red was a stark contrast to her green serpentine scales and white clothes. 

"All right, let's pack up and get out of here," I said, waving my hand over the gold. We fished for the last item, which turned out to be two very gaudy SS spatial rings crusted in diamonds. Both of which I refused to wear and handed off to Simone who took them happily.

As soon as we were done, I tapped the system menu without waiting another second. 

We reappeared in the brewery, and I noted fresh damages to the construction site. Part of the roof had been peeled back, not by someone trying to enter, but likely from giant explosions outside.

The others were popping up behind me, but I wanted to see the situation. I jumped up through the hole, landing on the lip of the roof and shielding my eyes just as a massive combat in the distance exploded again, shaving off the bricks of some houses. 

I glanced up at the deeply overcast sky. A crackle of thunder announced the coming storm as a few small droplets pattered on my shoulders before rain began to fall in earnest. I looked back down at the ladies who were relishing having left the instance. 

"If you guys have anything to protect yourselves, I'd recommend you suit up. It looks like we've arrived in the midst of a new storm." I told them, staring out into the distance before putting on every piece of armor that I owned.

AN - Thick chapter, but I got plenty of buffer so I won't try to split it. Enjoy.